Also mentioned in the roadmap were speed and feature revisions on the Celeron lineup. Aside from the extra speed boost, the new Celeron chips will also receive EM64T support.

Intel Single Core Value Desktop Lineup LGA775

Processor

Speed

L2 Cache

FSB

Launch

Celeron D 355

3.33GHz

256KB

533MHz

Q4'05

Celeron D 351

3.20GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

Celeron D 346

3.06GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

Celeron D 341

2.93GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

Celeron D 336

2.80GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

Celeron D 331

2.66GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

Celeron D 326

2.53GHz

256KB

533MHz

Soon

The Celeron D 351/350 will launch this month at $127 with price cuts on all Celeron and Pentium chips almost exactly a month after. Unfortunately, our crystal ball doesn't go past Celeron 3.33GHz. We would expect to see a Cedar Mill revision of Celeron, perhaps with 512KB L2 cache. The roadmaps very specifically do not show any new value processors based on 65nm at least through Q2'06. The roadmap does hint at speed bumps in Q2'06, but the exact reason why there are no 65nm value processors seems quite vague.

Desktop Chipsets

The roadmap also starts to talk about Intel's Broadwater chipset. Broadwater sounds exciting because it replaces all chipsets for Intel - from 955X all the way down. Our guess is that Broadwater will act more like nForce; different revisions will fill differing demands. Where Intel always used to speak of two differing chipsets (like Canterwood/Springdale, Alderwood/Grantsdale, Glenwood/Lakeport), even if they were nearly identical, the fact that Intel talks about a single chipset family unifying all of their desktop platforms indicates that things won't be exactly business as usual come Q2'06 during the next chipset launch. Aside from the general updates (ICH8 and next generation iAMT), the roadmaps revealed almost nothing about Broadwater.

Just before Broadwater, we will see the launch of 945GZ. G45GZ seems almost like a step back, with identical features to 915G including 800FSB and DDR2-533. However, the chipset will get an update on the integrated graphics to GMA950 and an updated Southbridge to ICH7. Oddly enough, Intel also claims that this will be a mainstream chipset, even though the FSB and DDR clocks are lower than existing 945P products. If anything, this might be just another indicator that Intel's push for 1066FSB wasn't really the solution that they had intended.

Intel has also decided to rework their motherboard SKUs and this should be evident already on the retail market. Each new Intel branded motherboard based on 945 or higher will receive one of several tags listed below:

X - Extreme Series

M - Media Series

E - Executive Series

C - Classic Series

Although the X and M are pretty self-explanatory, it looks like the E and C ratings seem a little ambiguous. Judging from Intel's website, it seems like there is a bit of overlap between some of these indicators. Intel's roadmap was also very pleased to announce that all of their current motherboards and future motherboards are lead free. There was also a bit of surprise that Intel will continue to work on new 915G designs right up until 945GZ. Either 915 is pretty comparable to 945 for value systems or Intel just has a lot of 915G chips left that they want to get rid of.

Finally intel execs came to their senses. people should applaud them all at once! They are evidently going to get rid of those super-trooper power drainers they are producing for last 2 yrs.

BTW you all seeing performance parity arise just remember tah if AMD needs it even wouldn't need K9 to compete with Merom(unless it will be some miracle chip). They could yust release quad-core server chips plus some 3.2-3.4 desktop K8+ dualies and be done with it !

It's becomming so funny that first chips able to really axploit potential of DDR2(666+),technology som much tooted and pushed by Intel, will be 65nm X2's.
Ironic, isn't it?Reply

Merom Merom Merom Kris! is the only thing Intel has I'm waiting for since I dont use notebooks. Does'nt quite sound as nice does it.:P

I just can't see the extra cache doing much for the 9xx series, much like the 6xx did'nt do squat.. So the only thing that remains to be seen and potentially exciting is power draw and overclockabilty of the 65nm desktop chips.Reply

But on a much more serious note, I think VT would be good if it would work with very little or no OS support. I remember horror stories with Windows and Linux partitions, and I really don't want to find out how much Windows on VT can destabilize the rest of operating systems running on virtual partitionsReply

Hmm..I think people have too high expertations after the few last years of gigahurtz.

I think 65nm will give us affordable AMD64 X2s maybe a speedbump to 5000 and 5200. But I think it will be more focused on quad cores, cheaper manufactoring and lower power consumption.

P4 65nm. I think we might see the 4Ghz now. But else the same thing as with AMD, cheaper dualcores, lower power usage.

Yonah is abit different, size the manufactoring cost of Yonah wont increase that much compared to a P4/X2 dualcore. But yonah sports SSE3, some 20-30% faster speed at the same frequency. So Yonah will be desktop and server attractive. More than Dothan is now. Plus it keeps its low powerusage. Also a speedbump is likely here.

But remember people, building an X2 or P4D is alot more expensive than a singlecore. So 65nm is not the "Yiiihah" speedbumpage. But more like the 1100$ AMD 4800 X2 down to 3-500$ thing.

So I wouldn´t really expect much other than more cores and alittle tweak here and there until K9 and Meron/Conroe.Reply

If I ran two operating systems at once, I'd basically idle on one while working on the other one. So my overhead for running to OSes would mostly be memory. It'd be like dualbooting without the booting, you just switch your active OS whenever you wish to. It'd be great for those of us who prefer *nix OSes but NEED windows for specific tasks *cough*games*cough*.
The problem, of course, will end up being how much additional software will be needed to do this (not to mention how much it will cost ^^), I'm guessing it wont be just installing both OSes and then booting them.Reply

Seriously why are you guys concerned about clock speed, as everyone has reported clock speed does not equate to a significant increase in performance. BTW who in the hell needs to run four operating systems at once?? I mean it reallY?? Glad to see intel in finally going to stop making two of the same chipset and giving them different names. I almost fell asleep looking at all the different cpu's seems like the same stuff just a different day. I dont run a multi billion dollar company but Intel should seriously simplify and stop getting there teeth kicked in by AMD.Reply